论文标题
确保在先前的概率转移下公平性
Ensuring Fairness under Prior Probability Shifts
论文作者
论文摘要
在本文中,我们研究了在存在先验概率变化的情况下公平分类的问题,其中训练集分布与测试集有所不同。可以在几个现实世界数据集的年度记录中观察到这种现象,例如累犯记录和医疗支出调查。如果不明显,这种转变可能会导致分类器对特定人群亚组的不公平。虽然公平的概念称为比例平等(PE)来解释这种转变,但确保PE-FAIRNESS的程序未知。 在这项工作中,我们提出了一种称为CAPE的方法,该方法为上述问题提供了全面的解决方案。 CAPE对患病率估计技术,采样和分类器的集合进行了新的新使用,以确保在先前的概率变化下进行公平的预测。我们引入了一个称为流行差异(PD)的度量标准,Cape试图最小化以确保PE-FAIRNESS。从理论上讲,我们确定该度量表现出几种理想的特性。 我们通过对合成数据集进行彻底的经验评估来评估CAPE的功效。我们还将CAPE的性能与几个流行的公平分类器进行了比较,例如Compas(犯罪风险评估)和MEP(医疗支出小组调查)等现实世界数据集。结果表明,CAPE确保PE-FAIR预测,同时在其他性能指标上表现良好。
In this paper, we study the problem of fair classification in the presence of prior probability shifts, where the training set distribution differs from the test set. This phenomenon can be observed in the yearly records of several real-world datasets, such as recidivism records and medical expenditure surveys. If unaccounted for, such shifts can cause the predictions of a classifier to become unfair towards specific population subgroups. While the fairness notion called Proportional Equality (PE) accounts for such shifts, a procedure to ensure PE-fairness was unknown. In this work, we propose a method, called CAPE, which provides a comprehensive solution to the aforementioned problem. CAPE makes novel use of prevalence estimation techniques, sampling and an ensemble of classifiers to ensure fair predictions under prior probability shifts. We introduce a metric, called prevalence difference (PD), which CAPE attempts to minimize in order to ensure PE-fairness. We theoretically establish that this metric exhibits several desirable properties. We evaluate the efficacy of CAPE via a thorough empirical evaluation on synthetic datasets. We also compare the performance of CAPE with several popular fair classifiers on real-world datasets like COMPAS (criminal risk assessment) and MEPS (medical expenditure panel survey). The results indicate that CAPE ensures PE-fair predictions, while performing well on other performance metrics.